November 06, 2007

2000 Terrorists. Don't trust anyone!

The truth is that since September 11 Islamic militants have killed
about 70 people in the UK. That's 12 people a year in a country of 60
million. Every death is terrible, but a threat to our existence it is
not. You have a much better chance of drowning in your own bath, of
being struck by lightning or of winning the national lottery than of
being killed by a terrorist. But that wouldn't persuade you to give up
your civil liberties, or that we have to invade more oil rich countries
for our security.

And from a commenter to Murray's post:

Perhaps the government could give us a fear list, from 1 to 10, of the
things we should fear most. Then we'd know where we are, and could
start some serious and structured fearing without having to worry about
whether we're fearing about entirely the wrong thing.